Jesse Norman: The hon. Member makes an interesting and fair point. Of course, if advertising revenue were so unattractive, the rest of the market would not be piling into it. At the same time, no matter who the owner of the enterprise will be, they will not be immune from wider inflation in programming costs. That is the nature of the business, and the question is what innovative and constructive responses will be undertaken by the management team to address that.
The plan is also bad economics from a public standpoint. The House will know that I spent a couple of years as a Treasury Minister, including during the period the Secretary of State talked about when all the support was given to the cultural sector, and I think it is bad economics. Even if the constraints were relaxed in the way that has been described, the revenue to be derived would be only, on a net basis, in the order of £500 million to £1 billion. My successor, the present Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), has pointed out that that is a drop in the ocean compared with the wider problem. At a 4% interest rate, £500 million amounts to £20 million a year. Are we really going to give up all the control, energy, drive and impetus that exists in Channel 4 now, and the £200 million of directed programming from independent production companies that comes from  that, in return for the equivalent of a £20 million annuity? I do not think that makes any economic sense at all.
Overall, this is not a Conservative proposal. What matters in this case is the quality of the ownership. Channel 4 has an independent ownership structure; it happens to be owned by the state, but its ownership structure has made it resilient to political pressure and able to commission highly innovative, risky and interesting forms of programming, for which we celebrate it.

Jesse Norman: I cannot, as I do not have much time, but I may take my hon. Friend’s intervention later.
It is not a Conservative proposal to sell Channel 4, and even if it was sold now does anyone really think the value generated would not itself be a reflection of the proposed doom scenario in advertising revenues because of the way in which future cash flow works? The key issue here is that we should support an enterprise that itself supports independent production companies, many of them in our nations and regions, that proactively supports disabled people, that supports the Union, and that supports levelling up. That is what Channel 4 does.
I have no doubt that Channel 4 can be further improved and enhanced, and I see its next episode as a down payment on the next generation of its own thinking about how its module could be further leveraged and enhanced, but at the moment it is doing a superb job. We should not sell it; we should proceed and support it in any way we can in the future.